A double killer who is suspected of murdering a Good Samaritan was on day
release from an open prison, it emerged yesterday.

Ian McLoughlin, who killed two homosexual men in 1983 and 1990, was on his
first unsupervised day out of jail when he is believed to have stabbed
Graham Buck to death.

The “totally selfless”, “happy and healthy” retired company director, 66, had
come to the aid of his neighbour, Francis Cory-Wright, an Old Etonian and
convicted paedophile who served time with McLoughlin and was being robbed of
a large amount of cash, police said.

The killing on Saturday

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Ian McLoughlin has an IQ of 140, but this twisted genius has already been jailed twice for killing gay men (David Brown writes). A bisexual who hates homosexuals, he is reported to have once been a rent boy, driven to kill because one victim fantasised of having sex with young men.

McLoughlin was jailed for life in July 1992 for the murder of Peter Halls, 55, a barman with whom he had been living in Brighton, East Sussex. Mr Halls was stabbed repeatedly in the neck while lying face-down on his bed in September 1990.

The killer was traced to a hotel in King’s Cross, Central London. He was found guilty of murder at Lewes Crown Court and jailed for a minimum of 25 years. He had been released from jail two years earlier after serving five years of an eight-year sentence for killing Len Delgatty, 49, in 1983.

Mr Delgatty’s skull was smashed with a hammer and he had been strangled with a towel before his body was stuffed in a cupboard at his flat in Stoke Newington, East London. McLoughlin later crashed a car while drunk and was found to have Mr Delgatty’s credit card, which led to the discovery of his body. The Old Bailey trial heard that the victim had been jailed for two years for under-age sex and another sexual offence. McLoughlin claimed he lost his temper when Mr Delgatty played a tape in which he fantasised about having sex with a teenage boy.

McLoughlin was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter. He was jailed for 13 years, but the sentence was reduced to eight years on appeal.

He grew up in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, and from his mid-teens was repeatedly in trouble with the police. He was sent to a juvenile care home and soon picked up convictions for theft and burglary and became a drifter. A brief marriage collapsed because he was troubled by his bisexuality.